The dinner straggled as all Peter’s dinners did; Alix mixed a salad-dressing; Peter himself flashed in and out of the tiny, hot kitchen a hundred times.  Kow, in immaculate linen, came back and forth in leisurely table-setting.  Suddenly everything was ready; the crisp, smoking-hot French loaf, the big, brown jar of bubbling and odorous chicken, the lettuce curled in its bowl, the long-necked bottles in their straw cases, and cheeses and crackers and olives and figs and tiny fish in oil and marrons in fluted paper that were a part of all Peter’s dinners.

After dinner they watched the moon rise, until Alix drifted in to the piano and Peter followed her, and the others came in, too, to sit beside the fire.  As usual it was midnight before any one thought of ending one of Peter’s evenings.

And all through the pleasant, quiet hours, and when he bundled them up in his own big loose coats to drive them home, Cherry was thinking of him in this new light; Peter loving a woman, and denied.  The knowledge seemed to fling a strange glamour about him; she saw new charm in him, or perhaps, as she told herself, she saw for the first time how charming he really was.  His speech seemed actually the pleasanter for the stammer at which they had all laughed years ago; the slight limp lent its own touch of individuality, and the man’s blunt criticisms of books and music, politics and people, were softened by his humour, his genuine humility, and his eager hospitality.

Next day she took occasion to mention Peter and his affairs to Alix.  Alix turned fiery red, but laughed hardily.

“If he considers that an offer, he can consider it a refusal, I guess,” she said, boyishly embarrassed.  “I like him—­I’m crazy about him.  But I don’t want any party in ringlets and crinolines to come floating from the dead past over my child’s innocent cradle—­”

“Alix, you’re awful!” Cherry laughed.  “You couldn’t talk that way if you loved him!”

“What way?” Alix demanded.

“Oh, about his—­well, his children!”

“I should think that would be just the proof that I do love him,” Alix persisted idly in her musical, mischievous voice.  “I certainly wouldn’t want to talk of the children of a man I didn’t--”

“Oh, Alix, don’t!” Cherry protested.  “Anyway, you know better.”

Alix laughed.

“I suppose I do.  I suppose I ought to be a mass of blushes.  The truth is, I like kids, and I don’t like husbands—­” Alix confessed, with engaging candour.

“You don’t know anything about husbands!” Cherry laughed.

“I know lots of men I’d like to go off with for a few months,” Alix pursued.  “But then I’d like to come home again!  I don’t see why that isn’t perfectly reasonable—­”

“Well, it’s not!” Cherry declared almost crossly.  “That isn’t marriage.  You belong where your husband is, and you—­you are always glad to be with him—­”